Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner’s offer to pay the salaries of 54 retrenched contract workers in the Borough of Chaguanas appears to be unprecedented.

Never before has a private citizen come forward with such an offer, according to a source at the Office of the Attorney General.

The AG’s office has been asked by the Ministry of Local Government for a legal opinion on Warner’s offer on Monday to pay 54 retrenched workers.

Warner made the announcement on Monday that he had found the money to pay the 54 contract workers who had been sent home the week before. He made the offer at the office of the Chaguanas mayor Natasha Navas, who had asked for help for the workers the week before.

On Tuesday Minister of Local Government Hazel Manning told the media that she was seeking the AG’s advice on what to do about Warner’s offer to pay the workers’ salary for the next month.

Manning said the money offer was abnormal and not in the books of the ministry.

Political scientist Dr Selwyn Ryan described Warner’s act yesterday as ’novel and bizarre’.

Ryan said ’The gesture was meant to be dramatic and it has achieved that, but I don’t know if it can be done through the system’.

He said ’On the face of it, it could have consequences that have not been budgeted for’.

Warner, he said, should have sought to help the people outside of the bureaucratic system.